Syria has changed its flag with almost every change of government, and the flag flown today is one the country has used twice before.
The current flag
Three equal horizontal stripes, green at the top, white in the middle, black at the bottom, with three red five-pointed stars set in a line across the white stripe. The proportions are two by three. The official colors are green 007a3d, white, black, and red ce1126 for the stars.
The flag was raised across Syria on 8 December 2024, the day the Assad government fell, and the caretaker administration used it from then on. It was written into law by Article 6 of the Constitutional Declaration issued on 13 March 2025, which describes a rectangle divided into three equal bands, green above, white in the middle and black below, with three red stars in the white. On 25 April 2025 the foreign minister, Asaad al-Shibani, raised it at United Nations headquarters in New York, replacing the two-star flag on the row of member state flags. The Constitutional Declaration sets a five-year transitional period, so the flag currently rests on an interim document rather than a permanent constitution.
The design is close to, but not identical with, the flag of 1932. That one was twice as long as it was tall, with smaller and more evenly spaced stars. The version in use now is shorter and wider, with larger stars.
A flag for every government
The short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria under Faisal, from March to July 1920, flew black, green and white stripes with a red triangle at the hoist carrying a white seven-pointed star, taken almost directly from the flag of the Arab Revolt. That design did not survive the French takeover, and it is often confused with what came next.
The green, white and black tricolor with three red stars was set out in the constitution of 1930 and first raised in 1932, in Aleppo in January and Damascus in June. It was the flag of the first Syrian republic under the French Mandate, and the flag under which Syria became independent on 17 April 1946. Syria replaced it in 1958 on joining the United Arab Republic with Egypt, whose flag was red, white and black with two green stars. When Syria seceded from the union in 1961 it went back to the 1932 flag.
The Ba'ath Party took power on 8 March 1963 and changed the flag again, keeping the red, white and black bands but with three green stars, for a hoped-for union of Syria, Egypt and Iraq that never came. From 1972 Syria flew the flag of the Federation of Arab Republics, the same bands with a golden Hawk of Quraysh in the center. On 29 March 1980 it returned to the two green stars of the United Arab Republic, and that flag lasted until December 2024.
The 1932 flag reappeared in the streets in 2011, carried by protesters against the Assad government and then by opposition groups and the Free Syrian Army through the civil war. For thirteen years the two flags marked the two sides. When Damascus fell, the opposition flag became the state flag.
The colors
Green, white and black are the Pan-Arab colors, conventionally linked to the Fatimid, Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, with red for the Hashemites. The same four colors appeared on the flag Syria flew until 2024, arranged differently.
The three stars originally stood for the three districts of the Syrian state, Damascus, Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor. After Jabal Druze and the Sanjak of Latakia were added to Syria in 1936 the stars were reread to cover them as well. Since 2011 they have most often been explained as freedom, dignity and justice, or simply as the Syrian people.
Official use, and contested use
The flag flies on government buildings, at state occasions and in military use, and Syrian missions abroad changed over during 2025. The state emblem was replaced separately, with a new eagle carrying three stars adopted on 3 July 2025.
The change was not uniformly welcomed. The Kurdish-led administration in the north-east decided on 12 December 2024 to raise the new flag over its institutions, but the flag has since become a marker in the dispute over how far Damascus governs the region, and there have been incidents of it being lowered or removed. Similar friction has followed the disputes in Suwayda. The old two-star flag has largely disappeared from public display inside Syria, though it survives on walls and doors and among supporters of the former government abroad.
Shared vocabulary
Jordan and Palestine use the same colors in the older Arab Revolt arrangement, horizontal bands with a red triangle at the hoist, which is what Syria itself flew in 1920. Egypt and Iraq use the red, white and black arrangement Syria left behind in 2024. The palette is common across the region and comes from the same early twentieth-century Arab nationalist movements; what changes between the flags is the order of the bands and what sits on the white.
References
[1] Flag Institute. "National Flags: The Flag of Syria."